There’s been a lot of interest from readers here at Wizbang about the race for the White House, and before the big Super Tuesday match-ups start their pregame warmups and drown out everyone else, I’d like to put up an informal poll to see who everyone would like.
Here’s how it works: Everyone gets two votes. Please say first whether you tend to lean more to the Republicans or to the Democrats, then say who you would vote for if the Republican and Democratic primary were being held today in your state. What’s different here, is that everyone gets a vote on each side. As an example and to start things off, I lean Republican (OK, I lean so far GOP that I’m horizontal, but you get the idea), and if I were to pick a Democrat I’d choose Barack Obama and if I were to vote for a Republican right now, I’d go for Fred Thompson.
If enough people participate, this will give us a feel not only for the preferences of Wizbang readers, but it can illuminate the significance of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ primaries. That is, each primary will produce two sets of results – the results from voters who ‘declare’ a preference for that party, and results from all voters.
Since I did not bother to get the blessing from either party’s National Committee, no real delegates will be awarded, but even so, I’d say this is worth a go.
Have at it!
Matthew is a big hypocrite here. He claimed that Romney ‘s association with the Mormon church disqualifies him to be a president for his poor judgement. So Obama ‘s association with Pastor Wright ‘s church doesn’t deter Matthew from voting from him. I guess Obama ‘s extremism on “killing babies, not terrorists” is more important to Matthew.
I am Republican.
In my Washington state primary, I plan to vote for Mitt Romney. (Rudy G. is my first choice; Fred my second. However, I’m almost certain both will be close to if not completely out the race by Feb. 19, so I’d rather not “waste” my vote–a vote I certainly don’t want going toward that backstabbing, sellout and psuedo-Republican McCain.)
If I were a Democrat (and I just might be if McCain gets the GOP nomination), I’d vote for Hillary Clinton. I have ZERO confidence in Barack Obama and his understanding of the GWOT and in fighting Islamofacism. Plus his speeches are filled with cheap, meaningless platitudes. (Seriously, WTF kind of platform is “Hope and Change” to run on? Does anybody know what that means? Anybody? Beyond vapid.) So I’d vote for Hillary as much as I’d think she’d financially ruin the country if her health care plan ever went into action. I have a fair amount of confidence that when pressed to make key foreign policy and military decisions, she’d do the right thing. (Though I’m sure I’m fooling myself….)
Lean Republican
Republican: Guiliani
Democrat: Clinton
but you must acknowledge his background and bias. The following is from Wikipedia:
I don’t really want to derail the thread further, but you forget the next sentence:
By 1939, however, he had become disenchanted with the party and his participation began a steady decline; by the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact in September, he was thoroughly and permanently disillusioned with the Communist Party, the Soviet Union, and Marxism itself.
Wow, a whole year (in his early 20s) as a communist. Way to dismiss the ideas of an important 20th century American historian with extraordinarily narrow and ignorant ad hominem.
LAI,
Let’s ignore matthew for just a bit. I want to ask a serious question to you. I know you probably prefer Thompson’s ideology as the most preferable of what’s available, but do you think he’s our best candidate? This would mean all the factors that go into how people vote (most are not very partisan): looks, likability, being perceived as less extreme, etc.? The other is loyalty to the President. Huck has been dissing the President in order to score points, but Giuliani as been as consistent a supporter of the President that we have. He’s said that he would appoint justices similar to Roberts/Alito, has formulated a plan for meaningful tax cuts, and should be pretty good on national security. The other big issue, immigration — this has got to the point where most Republican candidates seem to at least want to try to limit illegal immigration — so hopefully not too bad. What are your thoughts?
Peter F.—my thoughts replicate yours to the T.
Matthew,
Obama is an empty suit, so get over yourself. Hillary is the Dem choice since she’s probably more beatable and would be a less bad President.
For the GoP, I’d write in Jeb Bush -just to see the Donks’ heads explode.
so you consider this marxist someone serious? I don’t take him any more seriously than I do David Duke. You should have quoted the whole paragraph:
By 1939, however, he had become disenchanted with the party and his participation began a steady decline; by the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact in September, he was thoroughly and permanently disillusioned with the Communist Party, the Soviet Union, and Marxism itself. He did not, however, change his views on capitalism: “I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it
Let me repeat: ” . . . He did not, however, change his views on capitalism: “I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it”
Since we are a capitalist country, he hates us. So this asswipe commie is an important historian to you?
Since we are a capitalist country, he hates us. So this asswipe commie is an important historian to you?
Too stupid to respond to further. Waste of time.
mantis?
I have a serious question. Why did you not quote the whole paragraph? I know you read that next sentence.
Neh,
I think Fred is likable and can win in the general election. Given the current crop, my best scenario is Fred/Mitt or Mitt/Fred. I heard some talk about J.C. Watts as the VP. That ‘s probably OK too.
In terms of loyalty to the president, I think Fred has been pretty good on that front. He has disagreed with the pres on spending and immigration. We shouldn’t count that against him though.
I can live with Rudy and think he is definitely better than McCain or Huckable. But the life issue and his personal life is a big negative for social conservatives. So I think Fred is the guy with the best chance to unite the 3 legs of conservatism (save babies, kill terrorists, small gov).
yeah, mantis, after countless accusations of conservatives not answering qns and shifting topics, now you want to stop with “too stupid to continue”
I think the readers here know you too well. You’ve been caught selectively quoting to mislead (anyone can go to Wikipedia and search Richard Hofstadter and read the section under Marxism to see what you did).
solidly republican
republican: Fred!
democrat: hillary (write in would be Lieberman if that were possible)
I have a serious question. Why did you not quote the whole paragraph? I know you read that next sentence.
Because disliking capitalism is not synonymous with embracing Marxism/communism. Hell, we don’t have a purely capitalist economy (witness the present attempts to manipulate it outside the market for example).
The real question is why, when you clearly saw the next sentence in which Hofstadter’s denunciation of communism just one year after joining the party was detailed, did you omit that and try to paint him as some died-in-the-wool communist who should be summarily dismissed? It’s ad hominem to begin with and has nothing to do with the essay that I linked, which was written 25 years after he rejected communism, but it’s entirely ignorant of the man’s work thereafter and the political/idealogical trajectory (a rightward trajectory) that work reveals.
I’ve treated your question as serious, but in truth you have no serious questions. All you have is bullshit.
watts would be an awesome choice for VP. i hadn’t heard that one before. if jindal hadn’t just been sworn in as gov of La, i think would be an interesting choice. both for now and to set things up for the future.
LAI,
OK, we’ll see how it turns out. Fred or Mitt or combination are acceptable to me.
I don’t think we should pick a VP from the current crop involved in the primaries. JC Watts would be great.
By the way (as much as I support the President), respectfully disagreeing with the President on immigration and spending is something of course I think conservatives SHOULD be doing.
Republican
r: Thompson
d: Clinton
I guess Obama ‘s extremism on “killing babies, not terrorists” is more important to Matthew.
Whose quote is that? Are you quoting your own shitty bumper sticker slogan? You do realize, LAI, that when you use quotation marks, you are implying that someone actually said the words therein. Right?
As for Obama being an empty suit: whatever. Hillary is a moderate, I’m left of center, so I wouldn’t vote for her in a primary. And if Obama does win, which is unlikely, he handily beats any Republican in a general election, except maybe McCain.
mantis,
Hofstadter may have left the communist party (probably because he was angry that they were not leftist enough — he left because the communists were making a pact with the Nazis — so it’s not because he abandoned leftist ideas that he left communism). The article says that he did begin moving right later, but even then he was well left. I think that you would admit that it would not be wrong to call him a leftist. To put it another way, he may have drifted right (from communism), but he was NEVER a conservative.
And you quote a leftist historian without any medical training that writes an article that purports to diagnose being a right-winger as having some type of mental disorder? That’s not history, that is psychiatry — Hofstadter does not have any training or authority in that field. He can write all day about how he thinks history proves that the left is better (which of course I would object), but what qualifies him to write an article that purports to diagnose a medical condition?
P. Bunyon, you beat me to it. Locally I am all over the map, nationally I tend republican but have voted democrat.
R: Thompson
D: Biden (write in maybe Lieberman)
Matthew,
Cannot avoid cheap distraction tactic, right? Why Obama’s association with Wright church doesn’t deter you from voting for him? If you don’t understand Obama’s extremism on the liberal agenda of killing babies, not terrorists, then I can explain slowly to you again. Don’t need to resort to that cheap tactic. Only the lazy and unserious will fall for such a cheap trick.
BTW, Mantis trademark of ad-hominen and pretention is well known.
A quick search
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGUzZDI4OGZjZGVmOWMyNGI4MGZhMmMwMTJlZDZkNmU=
In the middle of the last century Marxist and quasi-Marxist historians (such as Richard Hofstadter) clothed the Progressive thesis in a more becoming Marxian dress. In his book The American Political Tradition Hofstadter criticized the Founders for failing to develop “a means by which [our] society may transcend eternal conflict and rigid adherence to property rights as its integrating principles.” Madison, poor man, didn’t see a way to the dialectical synthesis Hofstadter envisioned, a new science that would abolish private property and usher in the post-capitalist state. Lenin, one is left to suppose, was the more insightful statesman.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-156045339.html
Hofstadter was always a man of the Left, from his early four-month sojourn with the Communist party in the 1930s through the various permutations of his liberalism. Indeed, Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964 was enough to convince him that America was “visibly sick,” and he later provoked outrage by joking that conservatives should be put into mental hospitals. It may be only natural that his biographer would share the same general inclination.
Wow. Like I said, too stupid (and ignorant) to respond to. Waste of time.
“In fact, what makes you think any of them would pander to Muslims?”
Every democrat running for President has the official position that they will end the war. Not win the war, but end it (in a loss for the United State). It is an anathema to even use the term “win” with regard to Iraq at a democrat debate. Maybe that’s not pandering to all Muslims, but it is clearly panedering to Al Qaeda and all Islamofascists.
Since I’m dealing with people who have no interest in the validity or strength of ideas, I will forgo any such discussion and adopt their tactics:
A quick search:
National Review, October 1, 1963
National Review, August 24, 1957:
The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes — the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists
Also 1957:
June 2, 1964:
But whatever the exact net result in the restricted field of school desegregation, what a price we are paying for Brown! It would be ridiculous to hold the Supreme Court solely to blame for the ludicrously named ‘civil rights movement’ — that is, the Negro revolt.
August 28, 1957
The State of Arkansas and Orval Faubus are wholly in the right; they have acted lawfully; they are entitled to those great presumptions of the law which underlie the whole of our judicial tradition . . . Conceding, for the sake of discussion, that the Negro pupil has these new rights, what of the white community? Has it none?
Please continue to quote from the National Review, and I will continue to ignore any arguments or ideas and dismiss it out of hand. Thank you for the tactic, by the way. It takes very little effort and no thought whatsoever. Quite handy.
Lean Republican even though I’m Libertarian.
R-Thompson (Is there even a question why this man should be the next President?)
D-Obama (I think that he would be the one to screw up the Exc Branch the least.)
I finally had a chance to read the article you liked to manits. Thanks for the great Friday afternoon laugh. That ranked right up there with the works of the great liberal democrat Micheal Moore or the “Loose Change” guys.
And I take back what I said earlier. Independent/liberal/ lefitst/democrat/socialist/communist/marxist– choose whatever lable you like you are what you are reagardless of what you want to call yourself.
It takes very little effort and no thought whatsoever.
————————————-
Thanks for admitting that and try to change the discussion instead of answering the args and the actions of Hofstadter. He was a Marxist who came to distrust the mass in the end. Even in 1964, he still thought that conservatives should be put in mental hospitals (a tactic commonly used in the Soviet Union) at the same time he decried McCarthyism. Anyway, it is a know pretention and tactic of ad-hominen and distraction.
Rep: Thompson
Dem: Obama
We know all the crap about Clinton and Edwards, but somethings are still unknown about Obama – so perhaps there’s some goodness under that liberal suit.
I lean somewhere to the right of Sun Tzu…
In the Republican primary: Thompson, because face it, all the others are either closet liberals/transvestites or flaming socialists.
In the Democrat primary: That bitch (because even her own party dislikes her)
“The State is he great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Frederic Bastiat 1848
OK, through the first 80 comments:
In “Open” contests:
Republicans
THOMPSON * 63%
ROMNEY * 13%
McCAIN * 10%
GIULIANI * 8%
PAUL/HUNTER/HUCKABEE * 2%
Democrats (on-ticket)
OBAMA * 59%
CLINTON * 41%
EDWARDS * 0%
Democrat Write-ins
LIEBERMAN * 50%
RICHARDSON * 25%
BIDEN * 13%
McCAIN/ROMNEY * 6%
“Closed” contests:
Republicans
THOMPSON * 66%
ROMNEY * 14%
GIULIANI * 9%
McCAIN * 7%
HUNTER/HUCKABEE * 2%
Democrats
OBAMA * 100%
CLINTON * 0%
EDWARDS * 0%
The other Limbaugh (David) can write about Fred better than I can here
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59755
BTW, Hitchens can see through the bigotry of the dem party
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/016678.php
Today he rightly sets his sights on identity politics and exposes it as a trade for one bigotry over another (via Real Clear Politics):
…
I shall not vote for Sen. Obama and it will not be because he — like me and like all of us — carries African genes. And I shall not be voting for Mrs. Clinton, who has the gall to inform me after a career of overweening entitlement that there is “a double standard” at work for women in politics; and I assure you now that this decision of mine has only to do with the content of her character. We will know that we have put this behind us when — as with the vowel — we have outgrown and forgotten the original prejudice.
Republican Primary: Thompson
Democratic Primary: I’d write in Lieberman
Razorgirl was on the money with that write-in thing. If Thompson doesn’t make it, then I’ll think of something else, I guess.
I lean Republican.
In the primary I would (will) vote for Thompson.
In the Dem primary I would write in Leiberman.
Libertarian
1.Thompson
2.McCain
3.Romney
1.Obama
2.Lieberman (write-in)
Being a citizen of Indiana and therefore disenfranchised every four years by the primary schedule, this is the only primary where my vote may count so:
Fiscal conservative, social moderate-libertarian so I guess Repblican.
R-Thompson
D-Clinton although this would have been Obama until his recent throughly naive and misguided foreign policy pronouncements. Obama would make the better peace time president, but we are at war so Clinton would be my pick. Excuse me I need to shower now.
Republican
R: Thompson
D: Richardson (write in)
Lean Republican.
Thompson. And Biden on the other side.
I lean Republican
Thompson
If I had to vote for a democrat I suppose it would have to be bin Laden. Whenever he “speaks” he really pushes for the democrats to win.
a glimpse of lefty propaganda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTW0y6kazWM
lean republican
Thompson
Hillary! (more beatable than Obama, I think)
I’ll post my GOP decision tonight. If I had to choose a Democrat, I’d vote for Hillary. I think she would do the least damage.
For one thing, she would likely avoid picking hugely divisive fights or highly controversial decisions in order to play for reelection.
In fact, that would be a decent slogan for her: “Hillary Clinton: Ready on Day One to Begin the 2012 Campaign!”
Republican
D – Obama
R – Romney
Matthew, I stand by what I said. And there is no clear majority for your side, but nice try.
Obama would not beat any republican handily. No way in hell. Are you going by polls? Because according to polls Obama beat Hillary by double digits in New Hampshire.
Oh wait, that never happened. lol. Schmuck.
Republicans
THOMPSON * 66%
ROMNEY * 14%
GIULIANI * 9%
McCAIN * 7%
HUNTER/HUCKABEE * 2%
Congratulations. You’ve demonstrated just how severely out of sync Wizbangers are with the American public in general, and Republicans specifically.
Brian, is there a single thread where you DON’T prove yourself to be an asshole?
J.
Republican
R – Thompson
D – Obama
*Strong Republican*
Republican- Fred Thompson
Democrat- Shillary
Very Republican
R – Anyone who could beat a Democrat in a national elections, so McCain or Giuliani. Probably McCain first.
D- Clinton (holds nose). Only because in spite of how socialist her ideas are, she probably wouldn’t screw up the country like Obama or Edwards would.
My objective is to keep the White House. If that wasn’t #1 on my list, I’d go with Thompson.